Reply #139: No not really

[proud2BlibKansan]

Tenure is a protection for the teacher from the politics of education. It prevents teachers from being targeted by administrators and school board members. I teach in a large urban school district. Many years ago, I had a student whose parent was a 'complainer'. The kid was a problem and the parent always blamed everyone and everything BUT his own child. In the meantime, the parent became active in local politics and eventually ran and was elected to our school board. Once on the school board, this man made a public statement that he would work to eliminate tenure in our district (showing his ignorance of the fact that tenure is a STATE law, not just a local policy). Now if we did not have tenure, what would have prevented this man from having me and every other teacher he had had 'words' with regarding his son fired? That is why we need tenure.

As I said earlier, the answer is for school district administrators to do the jobs they are paid to do and fire teachers BEFORE they are tenured. They have 5 years in my state and at least 3 years in most states. Teachers do not turn bad AFTER they are tenured. I have taught for 25 years and I have NEVER seen a bad teacher become incompetent after being tenured. I have however seen several incompetent teachers granted tenure. And who decides to give them tenure? Administrators. That is where the problem is, not with the teachers.